'Pill mill' doctor contests seizure

A Houston doctor whose license was suspended after federal agents raided some of his downstate pain management clinics is challenging a legal move by Potter County authorities to seize $92,139 from his Amarillo bank account.

The Texas Medical Board temporarily suspended Dr. John A. Tafel’s medical license last month after investigators said he operated two unlicensed “pill mill” clinics and funneled more than $92,000 in illegal profits from one clinic to the account.

Authorities raided the clinics as part of an ongoing state and federal investigation into illegal sales of hydrocodone — commonly known as “hillbilly heroin” — Xanax and muscle relaxers.

After searching the clinics, federal agents analyzed receipt ledgers and detailed a large volume of cash payments — mostly for $100 or $120 — received at the clinics, according to court records.

In Potter County court filings, Tafel, acting as his own attorney, denied claims the money a Potter County investigator seized from his Amarillo National Bank account in October constituted contraband gained from committing a felony. On Oct. 24, Amarillo National Bank responded to a grand jury subpoena and produced documents related to Tafel’s accounts with the bank.

“The state has engaged in ‘institutional bad faith’ based on several government irregularities, in the process of seizing claimants monies, including the improper utilization of civil investigations and actions to further an investigation wholly criminal in nature,” Tafel’s legal answer said.

Federal authorities estimated four clinics supervised by Tafel had more than 6,000 patients and Tafel earned $720,000 from managing, supervising and operating “illicit pill mills” in the Houston area, according to Potter County court records.

Before the raids, undercover federal agents posed as patients with fake illnesses and received prescriptions from the clinics, according to state court records.

The Texas Medical Board has no records of any pain management clinics operated by Tafel in Amarillo.

State records list no disciplinary actions against Tafel or any of the four clinics, but the Texas Medical Board has disciplined 19 of the state’s roughly 300 pain management clinics since 2011.

No one has been charged with a crime in the raids, authorities said, but several clinics have voluntarily surrendered pain management certifications that allowed them to dispense drugs, state records show.